A figure of Chinese folk religion. Shen Kuo’s Mengxi Bitan tells how the painter Wu Daozi painted Zhong Kui from a dream of the Tang emperor Xuanzong. Later, people hung his picture on their doors.
Record, Folk and Modern are kept apart, and each one carries its source.
In his Mengxi Bitan, written in the Song dynasty, the scholar Shen Kuo tells how Wu Daozi painted Zhong Kui as the Tang emperor Xuanzong had seen him in a dream. It is the earliest record of the picture in our files.
To verify: The Mengxi Bitan passage itself; our source is a 2026 article; What the emperor dreamed, in the book’s own words
Later, people hung a picture of Zhong Kui on the door of the house. Our files do not say when that custom began, at which festivals, or quite what people hoped for when they hung him there.
To verify: When door pictures of Zhong Kui began, and what people hoped for in hanging them
Zhong Kui belongs to Chinese folk religion, so we show him by an emblem, a painted scroll on a door, and not by his likeness. We tell the story of the dream and the door, and make no promise to anyone who hangs his picture.
